:HIV-Infected Mothers' Videotaped Legacies for Their Children. Donna B. Barnes, Susan Taylor-Brown, and Lori Wiener. (1997). Qualitative Sociology, 20.1. 7-32.
In the advocacy of visually enriched sociology, the authors write:
Chaplin (1994) argues that post-postivist and feminist methodological approaches suggest the desirability of a visually enriched sociology. These methodologies attempt to replace a sociology of a topic with a sociology that emphasizes less distance between researcher and participant, and less distinction between verbal analysis and visual representation as data. Becker (1986) lays out in text and photographs how sociologists can learn to sharpen observational and analytical skills by incorporating photography and methods of inductive reasoning into research. Visual media affords the researcher an extensive opportunity to replay the visual data expanding the analysis by "aiding the human eye for complexities and the memory for unobserved details and observing the fluid and emotionally contexualized reality" (Collier 1967: xii; Beloff 1985; Goffman 1979). Visual data can record the nonverbal content of culture (Collier 1967), and according to Beloff (1985) "drink in the complex of things and happenings" (9).
Their analytical method followed inductive reasoning and systematic comparison of data from the videotapes. In order to do this, they utilized techniques of coding, memo writing and diagrams [how?] and induced a central theme.
The authors write about the advantages of this visual method despite limited interactions between researchers and the mothers: "the method offers the spontaneity and vividness of an uninterrupted stream of information from the individual, as the mother is allowed to talk without researcher intrusion in the form of questions" (p.13).
Through this visual sociology study, they maintain that "We strive to 'produce knowledge that
is 'for women' rather than 'about women' which cast women in the role of active producers of their own lives" (Keller 1985, as cited in Chaplin 1994: 11; as cited on page 13).
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- Kay Yang
- Compose yourself, then compose. Every frame is a moment of now. Take nothing for granted. By all means, try all means. When it doubt, cut. Attain the inevitable. Allness is ripe--from a wall of a film editing room.